Such Sweet Thunder (7 page)

“Boom!”
he whispered softly, almost in an attitude of prayer.

On her feet! he cried excitedly, stealing frenziedly down the steps as if in a dream. When he reached the yard he seized the trembling kitten, clutched it to his breast, and again ascended the steps, and let it fall.

Boom!

Not hard enough.

This time he ran down the steps and grabbed the kitten by the nape of the neck, and when he had gained the porch he took her by the tail and flung her high in the air. She screamed, arched her back and stretched her four legs wide apart — as she sailed through the air and down with a wild static freedom
Boom!

She stood trembling, dazed, where she landed.

Why doesn’t she run away? Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. He breathed in short hectic gasps and his heart pounded in his ears. Go away, cat! But she didn’t go away. She trembled where she stood. All right then, I’ll
show
you!

He snatched her up and scrambled to the porch and blindly flung her over.

Boom!

Boom!

How many lives did Dad say? Four to go! Four!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Weary in his soul, sick with shame and mortally afraid he approached the kitten again. Each step he took with dread, but he couldn’t stop.

“Stop!”
cried a voice, and he looked about him and tried to ferret out the witnessing eyes of the hot sultry morning. He studied all the windows
and all the doors of all the houses carefully. Not a soul in sight. He listened. No sound save the sound of his heart pulsing in his throat against the background of the sound that came from far away, from the top of the alley, from the avenue, a large cruel indifferent sound that was suddenly drowned out by the voice that shouted in his ears:

Why don’t you die, cat?

At that instant a cloud drenched the yard in shade. A cool breeze blew over his face, chilling the sweat upon his brow.

“Run away! Shoo!”

She stood trembling at the foot of the steps. He stooped down to pick her up and she looked at him. He took up his heavy burden and flung it down once more. He followed her descent out of the corner of his eye.

Boom!

He stood before her, his whole body aching with fear. Just as he reached down to pick her up another cloud passed over the sun. Her eyes flashed demonically in the light. He sprang away from her, jamming his knee against the stone at the foot of the steps. A sharp pain shot through his knee and the bruise started to bleed. He grabbed her by the tail and, burning with a sort of terror, carried her up to the porch. He swung her forward, then backward, in order to get enough momentum to swing her as far as he could. But on the backward swing a sharp pain seared the back of his hand. His knuckle was torn and blood flowed from the skin around the bone.

He put the kitten down and looked at her. She trembled at his feet. He bent down and stroked her fur. Then he went into the kitchen and filled a bowl with cornflakes and milk and spread a spoonful of plum preserves upon it. He took it out to the porch and placed it before her. But she did not eat. She trembled where she stood.

Presently a trickle of blood oozed out of the corner of her mouth. She began to cough violently. He ran to the farthest corner of the porch and looked at her. Gradually she ceased coughing. She half fell, half lay down before the bowl of cornflakes. Her eyes shone with a dull glare. They were looking at
him!
The blood continued to flow from her mouth, but she did not move again.

The twelve o’clock whistle blew.

He dashed into the front room and got an old copy of the
Voice
and wrapped the cat up in it. Then he slipped quickly down the steps and into the lot of the empty house and threw it into the hole filled with trash where the floor had caved in. Then he ran back up onto the porch
and into the kitchen and found the scrub rag in a pail by the sink. He filled the pail with water and got the broom and carried them out onto the porch as quickly as he could.

Bra Mo’s truck rattled down the alley. Big Tom zoomed up the alley in a red truck and stopped in front of his house. And now he heard voices in the alley, people were coming home to lunch!

He hastily splashed the water on the bloodstains and swished the broom over the spot where the cat had laid its head, drying it thoroughly with the rag. When he had finished he took the rag, pail, and broom back in the kitchen and put them away. Then he went into the toilet and vomited. After that he washed his face with cold water and waited for his mother to come.

“Did you stay in the yard like I told you, babe?” Viola asked, filling his plate with warmed-over beans from last night.

“Yes’m.”

She fished out a piece of fat meat and put it on his plate. Then she chopped up part of a Spanish onion and strewed it over the beans and poured out a glass of cold buttermilk from the bottle she’d brought with her.

“Ain’t you hungry?” noticing that he wasn’t eating. She took a pan of corn bread out of the oven, sliced a wedge, and put it on his plate.

“No’m.”

“What’s the matter with you? You look a little ashy in the face.” She noticed his hand and his knee. “What happened to your hand an’ your knee?”

I killed the cat nine —
ten
times!… he thought, but no sound escaped his mouth. His heart pounded and the sick feeling rose once more to his throat.

“What happened to your hand an’ your knee?…” Viola was asking.

“I hurt it.”

“Where?” examining the wound more closely.

“On the step in the yard.”

“You got a nasty gash there.” She led him into the middle room and sat him down on the vanity stool. She rummaged in the middle drawer for bandages. Then she washed and dressed the cuts on knee and hand. “There, is that better?”

“Yes’m.”

She took him in her arms.

“No wonder you look so peaked. Come on, now, baby, an’ eat your lunch. You’ll feel a lot better with some hot food in your stomach.”

The one o’clock whistle blew. Viola had dashed out of the house a little before twelve-thirty promising to bring him something nice if he would be a good boy and not go out of the yard.

He sat on the orange crate waiting for five o’clock. He looked at the spot where the cat had died. It had dried and was cleaner than the rest of the porch. “Like there never was a cat!” His heart gladdened to the idea.

He glanced nervously at the empty house.

A voice came from behind him. He turned around and saw Mrs. Crippa’s lips moving as she stepped onto her porch. He held his breath in fear that she would come over and accuse him. Instead she descended to the cellar carrying a glass water pitcher. A few minutes later she returned with the pitcher filled with wine. Looks like blood!

One o’clock slipped into two o’clock. He went down into the yard and leaned over the fence. He stared at the empty house for a long time. He peered into the hole where the cat lay. Then after a while he went down to the shed on Aunt Lily’s porch and took out an old hammer, some old rusty nails and a saw, and some scraps of lumber Rutherford had brought home. I’ll make a jig.

“A three-wheeled wagon shaped like a triangle,” he heard Rutherford say. “With a long axle supportin’ the back wheels an’ a short one — an iron rod — in front.”

He worked lifelessly at his task in the far corner of the yard near the gate separating it from the shoot that led to Campbell Street. It was shady there because of the great oblique shadow thrown by Miss Ada’s house.

Suddenly a lean hungry-looking tiger cat jumped up on the fence and walked along its edge. Its shadow fell upon the yard. He froze with terror. The cat! He turned to see if it was really
her
. The strange cat jumped onto the shed and sniffed and then jumped down onto Aunt Lily’s porch and stood for a moment within the shadows where he had discovered
her
. Suddenly its head appeared over the edge of the concrete wall. It was ascending the steps. It was in the yard. It sat on the stone step at the foot of the staircase where he had hurt his knee. It sniffed at the dried blood. He lowered his eyes and stared at the cracks in the yard. He felt the cat
looking at him!
He lifted his eyes and the cat stared at him for several seconds. The sun shone fully upon its face, upon its eyes.

“Git away, cat!” He raised his hammer threateningly. A chilling breeze wafted his body. The shade seemed darker, though the sun shone brightly.

“Scat!”
again raising the hammer. The cat retreated, but paused on the middle step halfway up the stair, and continued to stare at him.

“Go
away,
cat!”
The cat ran up to the porch. It sniffed at the clean spot. Then it sat on and stared at him, as before.

How does he
know?
He threw the hammer at the cat, but missed and tore a hole in the bottom of the screen. The cat leaped in three bounds from the porch onto the shed and into the lot of the empty house and disappeared into the hole into which he had thrown
her!

“What your momma a-gonna say abouta that, Tony, ey?”

Mrs. Crippa stood on her porch looking at him.

She
knows!
She’ll
tell!
“About what?” he exclaimed desperately.

“That hole in the door!” waving her forefinger at him, her face wrinkling into a smile. “Ah Tony, you a bad boy, but I gonna geeva you somatheeng just the same!”

He went over to her porch and she handed him two over-ripe peaches.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She went back into the kitchen and he threw the peaches over the fence. Just then a swarm of flies swooped down upon the lid of the garbage can.

Two o’clock slipped into three o’clock. But not before many leaves had fallen from the elm trees, and Bra Mo had made several trips to the neighboring houses burdened with heavy cakes of ice, not before many sparrows had scavenged crumbs from the porch banisters and windowsills and pigeons had made love on the hot roofs. From the alley came the smell of burning tar, which meant that Mr. Harrison was repairing the roof of Aunt Nancy’s house. Shorty had made several sorties up from the ground floor and had finally disappeared within the shadows of the neighboring back porch. Unc Dewey had come to the back door and looked out and then returned to the middle room where he lay across the bed and cooled himself with a palm-leaf fan. Now Miss Sadie appeared on the back porch in her slip.

“Kin you go to the store for me, honey?”

“No’m, Mom told me not to go out a the yard.”

“I’ll give you a nickel, baby.”

“I can’t.”

“That’s right, honey, you do what your momma tell you. Bless your li’l heart!” She stepped back into the house. Then Mrs. Derby came out on her porch.

“My, my! What a good little boy you is, ’Mer’go! Just a-playin’ all by yourself, just like a li’l man, so quiet an’ peaceful. Your momma
gonna be proud a you one a these days. Heah, baby, I got a piece a choc’lit cake I been savin’ for you.” She started into her kitchen.

“I can’t!”

“What? You can’t eat no choc’lit cake? Your momma won’ eat you if’n you take a little piece. Just a teeny-weeny li’l piece!”

He took the cake.

Policeman Jackson’s dog, Sammy, a mongrel hound with a long body, short legs, and a half-chewed-off right ear, trotted casually through the shoot from the Campbell Street side, paused at the gate, and stuck his head through the space at the bottom. Then he cut through the yard of the empty house, hoisted his right leg, and emitted a stream of urine against the door frame and then sniffed into the hole. He growled menacingly, baring his teeth, snorted, and backed away. After he had disappeared around the side of the house he heard familiar voices:

“Aw man, how do
you
know!”

“You don’ know
neither!
”

“Don’
none
a you niggahs know?”

The voices grew louder, accompanied now by the sound of scuffling feet and a stick scraping against the bricks of Mrs. Crippa’s house.

“Man, I done s-e-e-n it!” exclaimed the first voice, as four boys and a girl finally issued from the shoot.

“Turner Grey an’ Carl, his brother, an’ Tommy, Sammy Hilton — an’ Etta, his sister!”

“What you say, ’Mer’go?” Carl said with a friendly smile.

He’s blacker than I am, he thought, looking at his coarse black shiny hair. Better than Turner’s — he glanced quickly at Turner’s hair — and mine. It shines like r-e-a-l black feathers. He followed with his eyes the glistening arches of hair above Carl’s eyes and the silken brushes of hair that issued from the lids. There was a line of soft fuzz over his upper lip. He wanted to touch it, the smooth skin of his face.

“What you say, ’Mer’go,” he was saying, as though his tongue were made out of butter.

“What you say, m-a-n?” said Turner with an amused sneer.

Turner must have been about seven because Carl was only in the kindergarten while Turner was in the second grade. A long skinny raw-boned boy with tobacco-brown skin and kinky hair. He smiled at Amerigo with a sly knowing expression that made him fidget uneasily. Now Amerigo’s eyes darted among the faces of the others. Measuring their reactions, as though he were peering through a web of schemes and plans behind their eyes while concealing his own.

“Hi,” he said, greeting Sammy Hilton obliquely because he was the oldest and the meanest. Eight, with a thick crop of hair that he slicked down already. He glanced at the girl. She’s mean, too. Six.

“Them’s tough little jokers, Amerigo,” he heard Rutherford saying. “You stay away from ’um, you heah? You git to fightin’ with one of ’um — an’ you have to fight ’um both! They momma was like that, too. An’ still is! Tougher’n a bunch a rattlesnakes! Li’l black skinny gal!”

“You’d never think it to look at ’er now,” said Viola, “she’s fat an’ squat as a mushroom!”

“An’ fight!” said Rutherford, “Why, you’d have to kill ’er to stop ’er! The whole family — the whole kit an’ kaboodle — black, ugly, an’ mean!”

“Hi, ’Mer’go,” said Tommy.

“Hi,” looking at his hands to prevent their five pairs of eyes from discovering his thoughts.